Chapter 35 Aleksei
ALEKSEI
I know before Sergei opens his mouth that the news is bad.
He does not come to my study at this hour unless there is blood, betrayal, or both. Anton is with him, expression set, a tablet in one hand and a paper file in the other. Neither man sits.
Good. I’m not in the mood to watch anyone get comfortable while they tell me I was right too late.
“What?”
Sergei sets the file on the desk. “We know who ordered the attack.”
My jaw tightens. “Say it.”
A beat.
Then, “Alena.”
The room goes still. I don’t move.
Of course it was Alena. Elegant. Patient. Offended. Smart enough to smile while she slid the knife in. I should have known.
“How?” I say.
Anton steps forward and taps the tablet awake. “She didn’t use her father’s men for the attack. The man from the street wouldn’t talk directly. Not at first. But he had a burner. We pulled location pings and matched them against another number that kept surfacing around the time of the attack.”
He turns the screen toward me.
A cluster of calls. Dates. Short durations.
“A second burner,” he says. “Purchased through a third-party runner in Queens. We followed the runner to a woman who works security on private events. She didn’t know who she was running for, only that the fee was high and always paid in cash.”
Sergei picks up the thread. “From there we tracked the drop. Cash pickup at a florist in Tribeca. Floral delivery service was real. Delivery route was not.”
He slides a photo across my desk.
Alena.
Dark glasses. Cream coat. Stepping out of a black SUV outside the florist on the exact day the money changed hands.
Not proof by itself. Not enough.
I don’t say that. They already know.
Anton nods toward the file. “We kept digging. One of Alena’s old drivers is in debt. Gambling. Private, but not private enough.”
Anton taps the tablet in his hand and plays a clipped voice note. It is distorted. The sound quality is shit. But the voice could be Alena’s.
Could be.
“…just make her nervous enough to leave…”
The clip ends. I say nothing.
Because that is not proof. But who else could it be except for her? She’s always held a grudge against me for abandoning her.
Anton says, “The timing is almost too helpful.”
I look at him. He shrugs once.
But there’s something pulling at me. “Alena wouldn’t leave any loose ends behind, especially if she doesn’t want this traced back to her,” I say.
Then Sergei says, “Or she got sloppy.”
Also, possible. Maybe even likely.
Alena is smart, but pride makes people careless. And she has plenty of pride.
“I should have known,” I say.
That part is true whether she did it or not.
I should have handled Alena months ago. I should have known she would not take rejection quietly. I should have known that anyone with enough resentment and access would look at Zatanna and see the easiest way to wound me.
The fact that the evidence may be incomplete does not make the danger less real.
“So what do you want done?” Anton asks.
I set the photo down. “Nothing direct,” I say.
Both men look up.
“If Alena did this, she expects rage. She expects a visible reaction. I’m not giving her that.”
Sergei nods slowly.
“Dig deeper,” I continue.
“And Alena herself?”
“Watch her.” I pace once behind the desk, then turn back. “She may not be working alone.”
With my father insisting I marry her, it’s possible they might be working together.
I tell myself I’m only checking on her.
That lie lasts all of ten seconds.
The house is quiet, midnight quiet, the kind where every floorboard sounds louder and every thought has more room than it should.
I’ve tried work. Whiskey. Reports. Nothing helps.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her in that hospital bed.
Or on the sidewalk. Or standing in my hallway telling me the child isn’t mine
So eventually I stop pretending and go to her room.
The door is slightly open. Just enough.
I step inside.
Moonlight cuts across the bed in a pale stripe. She’s on her side, one hand tucked under the pillow, the other resting low on her belly even in sleep. Her breathing is slow. The room smells faintly of her shampoo and the stupid tamarind snacks my mother gave her.
I stand there longer than I should. Just looking.
I don’t touch her. Don’t speak. I just watch to make sure she’s real and here and breathing.
Then she stirs.
Her eyes open slowly, unfocused at first, then finding me in the dark.
“How long have you been there?” she asks, voice rough with sleep.
Too long. “Not long.”
She gives me a look that says she doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t push. She shifts slightly, making room without meaning to, and that small movement breaks what little restraint I had left.
I go to her.
The bed dips under my weight as I climb in beside her. She doesn’t stop me. Doesn’t move away. I lean over and kiss her before either of us can say something that would make this harder than it already is.
She answers immediately.
Soft at first, then deeper, her hand sliding up to the back of my neck as if she’s been waiting for this too. I move closer, one hand at her waist, the other drifting over the curve of her belly with more care than I have ever used on anything in my life.
She stills under my palm.
Not in a bad way. Just enough that I feel it.
I kiss her jaw, her throat, and let my hand stay there, rubbing slowly over the rounded shape of her stomach. The child moves, faint but real, beneath my touch.
Something in me goes quiet.
She inhales sharply. Then I feel it. Wetness against my cheek.
I pull back at once.
She’s crying. Not hard. Not dramatically. Worse. Silent tears, caught before they can become anything louder.
“What?” I say, already tense. “What is it?”
She turns her face away.
I cup her jaw gently and bring her back. “Zatanna.”
Her lips tremble once, then she says it. “What am I to you?”
I stare at her.
She laughs once, ugly and broken. “What, just a whore?”
Something cold moves through me. “What?”
“That’s what they thought, isn’t it?” she says, anger rising over the hurt now. “That’s what the people in your office thought when they played that audio.”
I go completely still. “What audio?”
Her face changes.
For a second she looks almost surprised that I don’t know.
Then the whole story comes out in pieces. Fast, ugly, shaking at the edges. The recordings. The office. The whispers. Someone calling her a hooker. The laughter. The way she ran. Alena outside afterward, circling her, saying all the things she already feared might be true.
By the end of it, I’m sitting on the bed with my jaw clenched so hard it hurts. I had heard the gossip when I got back. But by then she was already gone.
I knew enough to know something had happened. Enough to see the fear and the rot on that floor. Enough to fire everyone who touched it, pushed it, spread it.
But I didn’t know that was why.
I didn’t know that was what had been done to her.
“Alena,” I say quietly.
She wipes at her face. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just know it was all out there.”
Rage comes up so fast I have to swallow it down to keep from breaking something in her room. “I didn’t know,” I say. “But I fired everyone who talked about you.”
Her eyes widen. “You fired them without knowing the whole truth?”
“Yes.”
“How could you—”
“Because you were gone,” I say, sharper than I mean to. Then I rein it in. “And I knew someone had done enough damage to make you leave.”
She looks at me, stunned.
I hold her gaze. “I didn’t need the details to know they deserved it.”
I can see it.
Still, she shakes her head. “It doesn’t change things.”
Maybe not. Maybe it changes everything.
I move closer again, one hand going to her face, thumb catching the last of the tears there. “I want you, Zatanna.”
The words leave no room for interpretation. No teasing. No games. No strategy. Just the truth. And in them, finally, is the confession I have been avoiding by every other name.
Her breathing catches. She looks at me for one long second, then kisses me.
I kiss her back with everything I’ve got.
The sadness goes first. Then the hesitation. Her hands drag me down over her, and I go willingly, one hand braced beside her head, the other sliding under her nightshirt to find warm skin, a breast, the sharp inhale she gives me when I take it in my mouth.
She moans and arches up.
“That’s it,” I murmur against her. “That’s what you are to me.”
My hand moves lower, over her hip, her thigh, between her legs. She’s already wet. Again. Always so fast for me, and tonight there is something desperate in it, like she’s been holding this back too long.
I stroke her slowly at first, then harder when she presses into my hand. She’s more sensitive now, the pregnancy making everything sensitive, more immediate. I’ve learned that quickly. The smallest touch makes her shiver. The right pressure makes her shake.
She whispers my name when I slide two fingers into her.
I move down her body, kiss her belly once, then again, deliberately. Her whole body goes still for a second.
Then she looks at me with a softness that nearly undoes me.
I don’t let it. I spread her thighs and put my mouth on her instead.
She cries out and grabs for the sheets. I keep her there, licking slow and deep, my hand splayed over the underside of her belly to steady her while she writhes and gasps and tries to stay quiet in a house full of people.
“Someone will hear,” she whispers.
“Then be quieter.”
That gets me the glare I wanted. Then I suck her clit into my mouth and she loses the ability to argue.
I make her come once with my mouth and fingers before I even think about taking her. By the time I rise over her again, she’s flushed and soft and open, one hand over her mouth, the other reaching for me like she can’t stand the distance.
I strip us both the rest of the way and settle between her thighs, but stop before entering. “Tell me if anything hurts.”
She gives me a look. “You’re very bossy after midnight.”
“Answer.”
“It won’t.”
I lift a brow.
She softens. “I will.”
Good enough.
I ease into her slowly. The angle is different now. Her body fuller, her belly between us, forcing patience I probably needed anyway. She takes me with a low moan, hands sliding over my shoulders, my back, my arms.
“God,” she breathes.
I stay still for a second, forehead to hers, until the tension leaves her face. Then I move. Slow at first. Deep and careful. One hand under her thigh, the other planted beside her head. Her body answers me immediately, opening, tightening, pulling me in deeper every time I thrust.
She wants harder. I can feel it. But I make her wait.
I roll her slightly onto her side and go with her, fitting myself behind her, one arm under her neck, the other hand finding her breast. I spoon her that way, my chest to her back, my hand spread over the curve of her stomach while I thrust into her in long, steady strokes.
This position suits her now. Lets me hold her. Lets me feel everything.
She moans into the pillow, one leg hooked back over mine, fingers gripping my forearm.
“That’s it,” I say against her ear. “Take it.”
She does. Soon the slow strokes aren’t enough. She’s pushing back for more, frustrated, wet, vocal in a way that goes straight to my spine. I shift her again, sit back against the headboard, and lift her onto my lap facing me so she can ride me.
Her belly presses warm and round between us. Her hair falls over her face. She braces her hands on my shoulders and sinks down on me with a moan that sounds half wonder, half need.
“There,” she gasps.
“Yes.”
I hold her hips and let her move at first. Up, down, circling, grinding when she finds the angle that makes her eyes go dark and unfocused.
I watch her body take what it wants from mine, and that feeling from the jet comes back hard.
She feels powerful like this. She knows she’s affecting me.
I can see it in the way she looks at me, in the shaky confidence of her movements.
“Look at you,” I murmur.
She almost smiles. Then I take over.
My hands lock on her hips and drive her down harder, faster, making her gasp and cling to me while the bed thuds softly against the wall. I kiss her throat, her mouth, her breasts, then slide a hand between us and rub her clit until her whole body starts to tremble.
“Aleksei—”
“Come for me.”
She does, breaking over me with a cry she buries in my shoulder. I keep moving through it, lifting and dropping her until her body goes loose and oversensitive in my hands.
Then I roll her carefully onto her back again and thrust into her from above, one leg thrown over my arm, the angle deeper now, urgent in a different way. She’s wrecked already, which makes every stroke feel more intense, every sound more helpless.
I can’t last much longer.
Neither can she.
I kiss her hard, swallow her moan, and when she tightens around me again, it’s enough.
I come with a groan dragged straight out of my chest, thrusting deep and holding there while release tears through me. Her body answers with one last shudder, like the force of mine pulled another aftershock from her.
For a long moment neither of us moves.
Then I lower us both carefully, breathing hard, one hand spread over her belly, the other buried in her hair.
She turns her face toward me and says, very quietly, “That still doesn’t fix anything.”
“No,” I say.
But I kiss her forehead anyway. Because I am done pretending I want anything less than all of her.